WebROM

= The Web-resource operating mechanism (WebROM) is the methodology of declaring, displaying, and transmitting particular collections of Web resources on the Web.

Discussion

Yihong-Ding:

1.

"The specification of WebROM is different from the often-heard Web operating system (WebOS). The vision of WebOS is on the basis of that the Web as a platform. If the Web is just a platform, we may construct a uniform operating system that can effectively handles global namespaces, Web-wide resource discovery and management, remote process execution, authentication, and security. The execution of any new Web applications could be guided by such a WebOS. It is similar to that any new PC applications could be effectively managed by PC OS such as Microsoft Windows operating system. Certainly the Web development could become much more efficient if we can make such a WebOS be available.

A problem is, however, that the Web is an open world, which fundamentally contradicts to a personal computer environment that is a closed world. In an open world, we generally have no restrictions on duplicated resources or the potential of mixing Web identifiers with varied references. An open world also means a theoretically infinite large space of search. Hence a global (i.e. Web-wide) resource allocation methodology is too expensive (if possible) to achieve. These problems are main obstacles to produce a WebOS.

The vision of WebROM is on a difference basis of that the Web as a society. In a society, we have loose conventions about Web resource allocation and operation. But the detailed implementations of the conventions are open to individuals. For example, in our society we have federal laws that are general conventions of all the members in our society. A specific execution of these laws, however, is often interpreted slightly differently at varied local places due to their particular local condition. In an open world, nobody can predict all circumstance and hence such a flexibility of interpretation is crucial for the stable of society. Based on this analysis, WebROM is only described at the level of methodology comparing to that WebOS is tending to implement at the level of method.

If the Web is a society, which type of a society it is? In general, there are three basic types we could choose to develop our WebROM methodology. It could be a dictating society, a democratic society, or an anarchistic society. Among the three options, a dictating web is too hard to maintain because basically it mean a WebOS. On the other side, an anarchistic web is too difficult to manage since it has too few rules to follow. Therefore, a democratic web is the one we should and could achieve.

the intention of WebROM at Web 2.0 becomes to efficiently executing various specified Web resources. The main implementation of this methodology happens to be Ajax. Unlike other 1.0-level WebROM implementations such as PHP and JavaScript, the primary purpose of AJAX is not about initiating Web resources. By contrast, it is about initiating Web resources that can be executed independently. This fundamental change of philosophy causes the effective support of newer quality Web resources---the Web-2.0-quality resources. This is why the invention of AJAX is milestone comparing to other ones such as PHP and JavaScript." (http://yihongs-research.blogspot.com/2007/09/initiative-of-stage-transition-view-of.html)